Email
Print
ShareIt's said that if it weren't for dogs, some people wouldn't go for a walk. Well, frankly, for denizens of the megapolis, going for a walk to stay fit is now a necessity. For your own sake, really, whether or not you own a canine. Mumbai is intolerant to the weak.
As a Mumbaikar, you would agree that the modern conditions in the city allow only a healthy person to see the next morning. Heat, humidity, pollution, lack of greenery, a municipal corporation which has slept well past its wake-up call and fast-eroding human values which has no sympathy for those with emaciated pockets -- the key word to surviving the odds today is health. When a friend told me that Mumbai and health make for inseparable bedfellows, literally, I could see beyond the veneer of jest.
The city presents such unforgiving, abrasive and stinking conditions to its denizens that they are forced to become tough to survive. Now, survival of the fittest, as you may have heard, is a hard-core evolutionary principle: If you want to fit into a crowded suburban-train compartment, you have to survive on half your oxygen requirement. Those who can hold their breath for an hour to squeeze into the mass of tiffin-boxes and tabloids, fit best into trains and therefore are billed the fittest.
Speaking of being in the pink of health, let's admit the city is complex network of aerobic and anaerobic challenges. For example, do you know that your calf-muscles are being chiselled into shape by the civic authorities and at no cost? You need the resilience of an amateur mountaineer to scale the three floors of a skywalk. An estimate suggests that a common citizen goes up and down a skywalk at least twice a day.
That's some statistic, because there are an awful lot of common citizens in Mumbai. With the population going up by about 4% every year, the numbers should persuade the BMC to start a public-service campaign featuring such slogans as: "Convenience is for sissies", and "If you want escalators, go to namby-pamby Dubai." Anyway, once all skywalks are built, you will have to walk up to 2 kms to get an auto or taxi. That will give more flex to your spine, a particularly handy facility when you want to dodge gropers and pickpockets. Ha!
Finally, Mumbai toughens the mind too. You need the skills of a hostage negotiator and the infinite capacity to plead or persuade a taxiwallah or auto driver to take you home from any station -- something each one of us has faced and will continue to face. Oh, yes, did I miss food? Mumbaikars love to gorge. But then, you have to have a solid digestive system to digest the vada pav and dahbeli and peanuts and wash everything down with the brown liquid commonly known as cutting chai.
O! Mumbai! You are so vile, even so heartless at times. But I still love you, meri jaan. As a joint encore by Johnny Walker and Raj Kapoor would go: Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, par jeena yahan marna yahan iske siva jana kahan (It's difficult to survive here, but it's here that I live and it's here that I'll die). Now excuse me while I savour some exhaust fumes. And before I forget, I wish my city a healthy life.
